Managing emotions

• Show learners an angry/frustrated face and ask them to guess how you felt yesterday/last week (or whenever the last time was that you felt angry or frustrated).  
• Tell them about your experience, mentioning when, where, with whom, what happened and how you felt.
• In pairs or small groups, learners tell their partners about the last time they felt angry or frustrated about something, following your example as a model. [Adaptation: If you're worried about learner sensitivities, they can write their answer on a piece of paper and put it in a box or bag anonymously.]
• Monitor closely and put some examples on the board. [If the ideas are from the bag or box, you may need to be sensitive and adapt what learners have disclosed.]  
• Don't say who said them, but ask the learners if they can relate to them. Tell them that everybody gets angry and frustrated about things, and it's normal, and that they're going to listen to a boy talking about when he got angry at school. 

• Tell them you're going to give them three words or phrases that will help them guess why he got angry: school project – grade – lazy friend. 
• Set three minutes for this. You could write some process language on the board to help them express their ideas here, e.g. I think it could be …; I'm not sure but maybe …; By looking at the words, I think … 
• Get some ideas from the learners and write some of their suggestions on the board. 

• Tell the learners that they're going to see if they were right, or if it was something different that made the boy angry. Tell them that they're going to hear a conversation between him and his older brother.
• Play the audio up to this point (0:50).

Older brother:

Oh, that's not cool. I mean, that must be really frustrating. Did you speak to the teacher about it?

• Learners check if their predictions were correct or not, in pairs.
• Get some feedback and check learners have understood. Follow-up questions: Would you be frustrated like the boy? What would you do? 

• Tell the learners that they're going to listen to the next part of the conversation. Set up the true/false task (see Worksheet: Listening) and play the audio from 0:50 to the end.
• Play the audio again if necessary. Learners check their answers.
• In feedback, ask the learners to justify their answers. For example:

Number one is false because the younger brother says, 'I felt like they didn't listen'.  
Number three is false because the younger brother says 'Are you joking? How will that help?' He doesn't think the breathing technique can help him.

Answers: (1F, 2T, 3F, 4F, 5T, 6T, 7F)

• Follow-up questions: What do you think about this breathing technique? Do you do this? Is it something that you would like to try?  

• Tell the learners that it's always good to have ways to manage our emotions and that you have six good techniques to do this. Show Worksheet: Ranking.
• Individually, the learners read the information about each technique and rank them: 6 = they like the most, 1 = they like the least.
• Depending on the needs/level of your learners, you might need to pre-teach the following vocabulary: endorphins, journal, to guide/guided, meditation, sibling, refreshed. 

• After the learners have ranked the techniques individually, put them in small groups of four or five. 1) They share their ranking, giving reasons why, and 2) they decide which are the group's top three techniques to manage emotions.  
• They could share their top three, and reasons why, with the class. Create a safe space by sharing yours with them too. 

The learners could choose one technique to try out in the next 1–2 weeks to then share what it was like for them in a future class. I liked it because … / I didn't like it because …